Current: 5.5 years of experience
Location: Bangalore
A recruiter approached me in LinkedIn and since I had started preparing for Amazon SF, I thought of giving this interview. Meanwhile I had also enabled my LinkedIn profile for opportunities at US & EU and started applying to companies especially in EU.
OA (1.5hrs):
I got the link to hackerearth online assessment and I took it in mid Feb.
It had 3 questions: 1 medium LC, 1 medium-hard LC, 1 hard LC.
I was not very impressed with the type of questions and attempted it just for the sake of attempting. I solved the medium-hard one, partial output for medium one and dint even bother to attempt the hard one. I ended the test by 1hr, the time limit was 1hr 30mins.
Feedback: Surprise, surprise! I got a call from recruiter that I cleared the OA.
Round 1 (DSA - 1hr - Feb Week 3):
Q1: https://leetcode.com/problems/all-nodes-distance-k-in-binary-tree/
I used the hashmap to store the child-parent relation and solved the problem. Interviewer later asked if it can be done without extra space in which case I explained him the way to find parent on the go, but it compromises with the time complexity. He was fine.
Q2: https://leetcode.com/problems/jump-game-ii/
I had not seen this question before and I came up with the BFS approach, explained it and coded it.
Feedback: Cleared to next round
Round 2 (System Design - 1hr - Feb Week 4):
A manager took this round. After mutual introduction, he asked me to design a paginated API to return the posts similar to user profile page in Instagram. As the user scrolls down the profile page, more posts are loaded through this API.
The key challenge was API latency when scaled. I had worked on similar API design in my org and could design it. Designed the database, indexed the timestamp field and the query would be filtering based on timestamp with the default limit on number of records. As part of the response, the next timestamp is returned and the UI would have to send it back while querying for the next set of records so that the timestamp could be used to filter.
We discussed the pros and cons of this approach vs limit & offset approach. It was relatively a simple problem and this round ended within 40mins.
Feedback: Cleared to next round
Round 3 (Hiring Manager - 1hr - Mar Week 1):
This round was majorly discussions on my current project and architecture of it. I gave a detailed design overview, could answer all the cross questions that the interviewer had. Asked few questions to the interviewer at the end about the work they are doing. Fairly simple round.
Feedback: Cleared to next round
Round 4 (Final Round - 30mins - Mar Week 1):
It was the director of some other team. Just casual talks about my background, tech skills, experience. I got an overview of what his team does and what Sharechat is looking for and the future plans.
Feedback: Offer
Recruiter requested for documents and started the salary negotiations. I put the offer on hold as I already had two offers in EU by this time and was struggling to decide among them. I was also expecting Amazon SF to offer which dint happen. Recruiter was very supportive and gave me the time to think and take the decision. I took two weeks of time and finally declined the offer over mail.
Sharechat interview process was a very pleasant experience and I rarely got such smooth experience while interviewing for organisations in India. Overall, apart from the OA, the interview difficulty level was medium. Interviewers were friendly, I felt like it was more of a casual talks with my colleagues than with strange interviewers.
Recruiter was very understanding, did not ignore/ghost at any point of time even when I told I am considering EU offers, gave enough time to think and gave good insights about the opportunity. Most importantly, she responded back to my offer decline mail and respected my decision. Huge thumbs up to Sharechat on this!
My other interview experiences: https://leetcode.com/discuss/interview-experience?currentPage=1&orderBy=hot&query=&tag=anonymousengineer